Yesterday, I wrote about a problem that Ed B. from Long Island, New York had with some pictures not showing up as "thumbnails" in Windows XP. I suggested that Ed may have inadvertently saved some of his graphic files with the wrong extension. I ... received a few suggestions from readers with their thoughts. In fact, Pippie wrote to tell me about a security issue with viewing thumbnails in Windows XP: " MS turned off a few features in the Thumbnail View for stability ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Liz H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I appreciated the information on how to uninstall MSN/Windows Messenger -- although, I personally like it -- but, I'd rather see how to uninstall Windows Media Player (v9.0 beta specifically for Win ... XP) WITHOUT reformatting the hard drive or using System Restore. I'm of the opinion it can't be done without resorting to these fairly drastic measures. PS: Thank you for these wonderful newsletters! " My Response: I visited the Microsoft download web site in search of Media Player 9, and I found these comments: " Note: [Windows Media Player beta 9 ... (view more)

Yesterday's Visitor Feedback posed the question, "How can I stop the annoying voice on my Asus motherboard during the boot up process?" The answer to this question has been solved: the annoying voice that plagues Michael H. is actually a feature in ... the BIOS which can either be disabled completely, or customized with a different voice. I didn't receive any feedback on how to customize the voice, so I'll just tell you how to disable the darn thing. As Alan H. writes: " The feature that Michael is referring to is the Asus Post Reporter. It is a feature of the Asus P4B motherboard (and on other ... (view more)

Gazette Reader Ken P. writes: " Dear Dennis, When I attach a jpeg file to an email message it will send 8 copies. If I attach 2jpeg files 16 copies are sent etc.. It does not do it with bitmap or any text files just jpeg. They suggested reinstalling ... Norton Anti Virus, but there was no difference. I sent a test message with attached jpeg file to my computer at work and one message shows up in my in box, as a jpeg file, and the seven others show up in the deleted box as .DAT files. I did a virus scan and all is OK. What do you think? " My Response: The only time I've experienced anything ... (view more)

In this issue, I wanted to talk about the Scandisk dilemma that was addressed in a few issues ago in our Visitor Feedback. Recall: " I ran defrag on my hard drive using Windows XP Pro. Having completed that, I clicked on Scandisk to check the drive ... for errors. It was at this point that a window popped up and told me to shut down and reboot to run Scandisk. Now I can't get back into my system! Every time my system boots, it goes through the Scandisk. 3 hours later, it finishes Scandisk, then reboots the system... and restarts the process over again. When I try and cancel Scandisk, the computer ... (view more)

Gazette Reader Jim J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I ran defrag on my hard drive using Windows XP PRO. Having completed that, I clicked on Scandisk to check the drive for errors. It was at this point that a window popped up and told me to shut down and ... reboot to run Scandisk. Now I can't get back into my system! Every time my system boots, it goes through the Scandisk. 3 hours later, it finishes Scandisk, then reboots the system... and restarts the process over again. When I try and cancel Scandisk, the computer freezes! Any suggestions? " My Response: I tried to find the solution to this problem ... (view more)